in this story i envision fully autonomous cities and even single selfsustaining buildings and kind of flying cars – i call them lifeships powered by overunity antigravity propulsion devices –
the main hope i have for our society that -like you with the dna barcoder project – we are getting more and more fascinated by the beauty and intelligence inhabiting undisturbed wildlife systems so that we voluntarily back up our civilization into dense lush green cities and into non-invasive mobile transport living quarters

the way seems to me

a ) shifting from tilling to no-tilling
agriculture, could be called permaculture
as an example, a german farmer does intently sow so called weeds but better called wild plants together with three sorts of grains so all this combination of seeds support each other, strenghtens the crops and results in higher yields
his name is uwe wüst and his 150 hectares farm is near würzburg

also sepp holzer in austria is famous for his permaculture as is bill mollison from australia and masanubo fukuoka from japan

b ) parallel to a ) i envision the concept of vertical agriculture getting picked up and scyscraper farms becoming a reality
as there are allready aeroponic systems like the aerogrow being sold to consumers in growing numbers
i wish for ingenious companies and diy constructors to come up with selfsustaining systems allowing to grow 50% or more of ones vegetable needs in ones own bed- and living rooms
powered by rooftop solar panels and urban mini-turbines

my next hope is the advent of microalgae bioreactors
readymade for the layconsumer, enabling the future selfsustaining indoor vegetable home grower to harvest a very potent fertilizer plus eventualy some biomass to be converted into biogas for cooking or via fuelcell converted to hydrogen to power home heating and eventually a personal transport vehicle

all in all the reachable goal could be to be less dependent on traditional tilling vast landscapes of farming land and free this land finally with the aim to give it back to wildlife

c ) there are many psychological hurdles to be taken before the reversion of the now so eagerly posessed landscape into wildlife again can happen
your dna analyzer handheld device seems to me a highly potent tool to invoce a state of being in awe and admiration
about the synergetic interactions and individuals supporting each other in an undisturbed wildlife area

what moves me and i would like to bring in relation to your dna census project is

the idea of the vital individual , the modern technology user wanting to free itself from being bound to sitting at a table with a laptop watching a dvd about the beauty of the wildlife on this planet

i envision two tools enabling to both go into wildlife and being connected over the internet with all desired databases website servers and individual contacts while actually being surrounded by trees lakes rivers and animals

the first is a combination of two electronic ink displays
mounted on a headworn frame ( my favorite tech for this is the one from the Pixel Qi company also becaus of mary lou jepsen engagement for the one laptop per child project )
such an easy on the eyes electronic ink datagoggles/dataglasses
would relieve the user from constantly having to bend the head down to watch a smartphone/ hanheld device screen
additionaly giving the display the properties of being adjustably transparent like in the research of fraunhofer institute or with a headmounted camera and augmented reality software would result in uninterrupted immersion into the surrounding with at the same time retrieving and sending information from and to every desired destination

to further free the mobile user from his/ her hands being “glued” to the keyboard or the touchscreen, i was thinking of every finger and wrist and ellbow etc being “tagged” with a RFID stripe so that one could for example stand near a tree and type with the fingers lightly on the trunk
poems or botanical observations likewise
each RFID stripe would be recognised by the pocket processor device and the typing process being displayed on the head unit

three recent research projects might help achieve this
advanced input methods

skin input

muscle sensing

project natal

the second tool i see is a transportable virtual reality dome
allowing the user to set it up anywhere in nature
it consists of a plastic material with piezoelectric energy harvesting layers inside and strings ropes and other pull push or rotate handles so one can step inside the dome and play movement games ( liane climbing gliding or knitting leaves into a jungle home ) what movements then generates the electrical energy to feed the many projectors motion caption cameras used to display the users movement into the inside the dome surface projected scenery

both ideas are far from being concepted professionally
and could need some more research and url of existing developments being linked together

i did several mostly spontaneous attempts of describing the two above ideas and posted them at my blog at